Saturday, 19 May 2012

Sandpaper Numbers

I took part in a blog trade last week and traded blogs for the day with Shirley over at Motivated Mommy of Two. It was so much fun and she came by and shared how she organised her linen closet. I decided to share a tutorial for Sandpaper Letters on her blog and thought I'd put it on here this week just in case anyone missed it :)

My eldest little girl is 3 and she has just started to show an interest in learning her numbers the past few weeks. I am all for child-led learning so I wasn't really pushing it until I saw she was interested. I've been trying to get her to learn her numbers for the past few weeks but we have both been getting quite frustrated that she wasn't picking it up. She can trace over a number I have drawn for her like a pro but ask her to draw one herself and she gets herself into a right state!

I bought a book full of Montessori-based learning activities a while back and decided to look in there for inspiration on how to help Leyla learn her numbers. I found this activity in there and, from what I have read about them, they are brilliant!

To make your own Sandpaper Numbers you will need:

piece of paper

few sheets of sandpaper

pencil

scissors

sheet of card

hole punch

pva glue and brush

sticker reinforcements for holes

keyring

Draw out the numbers 0-9 on a piece of paper. You don't want them to be too small. Mine ended up being just over 2" tall. Cut them out using the scissors then draw around them onto the sandpaper. Cut out squares of card big enough to fit your numbers on. I cut mine to be 3" squares.

Hole punch a hole in the top left corner of each square then glue the sandpaper numbers on in the middle of the card. Make sure to get the glue right to the ends of each number to make sure the edges are glued down properly and don't lift. I drew a black dot indicating where to start forming each number, just to help her out a little.

I stuck the reinforcement hole stickers on each card, one on each side, then left the glue to dry for a few hours. I took the metal ring from a keyring I had and threaded the cards on.

To use the cards, first show your toddler each number and, using your first two fingers, draw on top of each of them to show how they are written. Help your toddler to do the same. The feel of the sandpaper will help them to understand how to make each number. Practice each number a few times before moving on to the next one.

These cards have really helped Leyla to understand how the numbers are formed.

3 comments:

Cute idea! Stopping by from the blog hop. When I was an actively practicing speech-language pathologist, I used this same idea with letters. It works well to teach the letter sounds and how to write the letters as well. I'm a new follower as well as a homeschooling mom.